Episode 26: Milestones, Our One Year Retrospective and Building Better PCs Part 2

Episode released on Tuesday, September 18, 2012

In episode 26, the founders give you an overview and review of the new Stronghold Games release, Milestones. Tony rounds up the interesting gaming news and the gang tells you what they think. The Secret Cabal Gaming Podcast turns one and we talk about our first year and give you a behind the scenes look at what we do, where we came from and where we're going. And lastly the founders continue their discussion about building better Player Characters in role-playing games focusing on developing morality and a value system for your character.

Jamie has a new project. His acquisition disorder for Dread Ball kicked in, so instead of buying in he's going to rework his Warhammer Fantasy army and make a Blood Bowl team.

Tony decided that instead of putting money in the bank, he was going to invest and buy 5 boxes of Return to Ravnica, which he plans to sell in ~5 years. We've decided we should contact the Treasury Department and have the national currency switched over to Magic The Gathering cards.

Brian's recent two weeks of gaming have been light. He got in the bi-weekly Pathfinder game, a few games of King of Tokyo, and a game of Carson City.

Tony finally got a play in of Alhambra! He questions whether one play counts towards the Topper Doctrine for a game with many included expansions.

Game Walkthrough And Review

The settlement of the country is the work of the players in their role as noble builders in Milestones! In this game, players work together to build roads, create marketplaces, and erect houses. With each milestone set along the way, they move further into the country. But while they build together, when it comes to procuring construction materials, money, and grain each player is on his own. Thus, you must carefully develop your own network of goods, trade and colonization materials and optimize its use cleverly. Whoever also develops a keen sense of timing can grab the most valuable building sites and in the end win out.

Gaming News with Tony Topper

Crowd-Funded FeaturesMars Needs Mechanics! From Nevermore Games, this project is at $26,104 out of $30,000 with an entry level of $40. 18 days to go yet so this will more than likely fund. The concept is it's a steampunk, alternate earth. The setting is London, 1873. A handful of elite steam engineers vie for a seat on mankind's first rocket to mars.

Dominare rulebook is now up! This is a 3 game series by AEG with some very interesting mechanics. The other two games are Courtier and Mercante. While they're stand alone, events in one can impact the others if you have them. All 3 games are due out in October.

Stronghold pre-orders: Crude and Article 27! Crude is an oil tycoon game. Article 27 is about passing UN resolutions. It seems to be a lighthearted game focused on the entertainment of political backstabbing as opposed to a serious, heavy thinking game.

A Year in Review

The founders share what the experience of being hosts of a podcast has been like over the past year. We start with the origins of the show and The Secret Cabal before the podcast. Jamie got the bug after listening to The Dice Tower and The D6 Generation and ultimately spurred us into action. We share where the name of the show comes from and what our motto stands for. We talk about the format of the show, what's changed, what's stayed the same, and how listener feedback has prompted us to alter things. In particular we explain how terrible we were at the start, when Jamie had to edit for 6+ hours to filter all the poor speech out. Then we cover the good and bad of producing the podcast. In the end, the good far outweighs the bad with the highlight being all the other awesome people we've had the pleasure to meet and game with. From there we talk about where we'd like to go with the podcast in the future.

Character Morality and Value Systems

Continuing the discussion of enhancing roleplay in tabletop games, we delve into the importance of having characters with developed morality and value systems, and more importantly giving other people clues as to the moral, value based, and emotional state of your character in game. Brian and Jamie reference the games where players had visceral reactions to things, and Brian shares he developed that particular game based on a television series and wrote it like a television drama. Jamie again shares his philosophy of playing tabletop character emotionally hyperbolic and how that leads to cinematic stories. He continues on expressing his desire that each player has 4-5 reactions like that per game. Brian pushes the idea that if a tabletop session was converted to a television format, if the characters are automatons doing things devoid of emotion then the story is bland. From there, we each discuss our particular playstyles, both good and bad, and brainstorm ideas to improve play.

Support The Show!

If you're thinking of purchasing any of the games that we talked about today and you don't have a local game store with these products available, we encourage you to purchase the games via the links in our show notes. This is an easy way for you to contribute to our show and get some fantastic games for your collection!

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The Secret Cabal Gaming Podcast couldn't be happier to be sponsored by a great publisher and close personal friend Stephen Buonocore of Stronghold Games. We have been partnered with Stronghold games for over 4 years and we continue because we respect their the quality and integrity and feel good about promoting their products. Please take some time to check out their website at StrongholdGames.com.

About The Secret Cabal Gaming Podcast

Five old friends of more than 20 years come together to produce a high quality, bi-weekly podcast about tabletop gaming of all kinds: board games, card games, miniatures, role-playing games and much more. In each episode you can expect board game reviews, gaming industry news and round-table discussions. The Founders, Jamie, Tony, Chris, Steve and Brian, each have varying tastes in gaming to provide a variety of viewpoints. Since 2011, over 100 full length episodes and now more with our new additional show, The Secret Cabal Express, The Secret Cabal has grown to one of the most successful tabletop gaming podcasts in the community. The Founders continue striving to offer irreverent entertainment, thoughtful commentary and enthusiasm about a hobby we love.

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The Secret Cabal Gaming Podcast reaches a significant amount of listeners and is continually growing with each new episode. Providing review copies of board games, card games and miniatures games is a great way for game publishers to showcase their products and also helps us cover a wide variety of games. If you are interested in sending review copies to the show, please send to: